Portland Thorns and Timbers begin soccer seasons

Soccer season has started in Oregon, but Timbers and Thorns fans might have to dig a little deeper to cheer their teams this year. Both teams face a lot of player injuries and offseason departures of some star players. Anne Peterson, sports writer for the Associated Press, joins us to preview what’s ahead for Portland soccer fans.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to Portland soccer. The men’s professional season started recently, the women’s is about to start. But both the Timbers and the Thorns are facing some big questions with injuries or offseason departures of some of their star players.

Anne Peterson is a Portland-based sports writer for the Associated Press. She joins us now. Welcome back to the show.

Anne Peterson: Hello, good to talk to you.

Miller: It’s great to talk with you. So I want to start with the Timbers, who are now three games into their season. Can you first just remind us how they did last year?

Peterson: Last year, they finished in ninth in the Western Conference and got into a wild card match for the playoffs against the Vancouver Whitecaps. And the Whitecaps just routed them, ending their season. It was the first season under coach Phil Neville. So a little bit of a disappointing ending.

Then there was drama with the team. One of their star players, a Brazilian named Evander, was disgruntled and posted on social media some of his opinions that he wasn’t very happy in Portland anymore. So that was kind of like the off season drama with the team, what was gonna happen to Evander? And just shortly before the start of the regular season, Portland dealt him to FC Cincinnati for $12 million, which gives them money to be able to go out and acquire new talent. And it also kind of solves the problem of having somebody in your locker room who doesn’t want to be there and isn’t happy.

Miller: Did they bring in talent with that money that they got?

Peterson: Yes, they did. They brought in a kid named David Da Costa. He’s only 24. He’s a midfielder, Portuguese native. And so far, so good. He’s looked really good.

They also brought in a Forward named Kevin Kelsy. He’s a Venezuelan. And he had a little bit of a rough outing last weekend in a 2 to 0 loss to Nashville. But again, he’s only 20 years old, so he has tremendous upside.

Miller: So what do you see as the big questions then coming into this season?

Peterson: Their youth is a big question, obviously they’re a young team. But the other question is who’s gonna be their scorer to replace Evander? Evander last season was an MVP finalist, and he had 15 goals and 19 assists. It’s gonna be tough for them to replace that kind of production. Their top scorer was Jonathan Rodríguez, who currently is injured. He’s got a knee injury. He’s gonna miss at least the next three games. He scored 16 goals last season. Also, they’re missing a defender.

So I would say youth and overcoming injuries are going to be their biggest challenges, at least at the start of the season.

Miller: Three games in, so very early, but with two losses and one win … and I think just one or two goals total?

Peterson: Two goals.

Miller: Two goals. I didn’t mean to cheat them of one of their goals. [Laughter] What’s stood out to you so far?

Peterson: Well, I really like Da Costa. I think that he’s very promising, and that once he finds his footing with the team and gets used to it, I think we’re gonna see more from him. They also got Santiago Moreno back against Nashville, so I think that the scoring is gonna be better, hopefully, going forward. But right now they are definitely missing that offensive firepower.

Last weekend against Nashville James Pantemis, the goalkeeper, stopped two penalties. So he’s going to force the conversation for the starting goalkeeper role. The Timbers also have another goalkeeper on their roster who was their starter last season. Now, Pantemis having this good, solid start. He did let go of two goals last weekend, but he’s having a solid start. So that is gonna up that conversation with the incumbent goalkeeper, Maxime Crépeau.

Miller: So let’s turn to the Thorns. Last year, I’ve seen their season described as “down, up, down.” They didn’t get a win until their fifth game. Then they reeled off a bunch of wins in a row and then they sort of fell apart near the end, although they did make the playoffs very briefly. What was your big takeaway from last season?

Peterson: Well, it’s tough during an Olympic year to get cohesion. Some of the stars were out of the team – mainly Sophia Smith (now Wilson) and Sam Coffey – for periods of time for both national team duty and then the Olympics. So that’s always hard to get kind of cohesion going. They also lost a key player at the beginning of the season named Morgan Weaver. The best way to describe her is kind of like an automatic boost the minute she’s on the field, she just has so much energy. She injured her knee, didn’t come back until September last year, so they clearly missed her. And unfortunately, this season she has injured her knee again. She said that that injury didn’t quite heal all the way. So this year, she’ll be out the entire season. She has a season-ending knee injury.

So she won’t be available, which is kind of a hit to the team because Sophia Wilson – we all know her as Sophia Smith – got married in the offseason. She’s pregnant with her first child. Her husband is Michael Wilson who plays for the NFL team, the Arizona Cardinals, and they’re expecting their first child. She’s not gonna be playing, so they took a real hit on offense.

A couple of things they did to remedy that is they signed a young Venezuelan woman named Deyna Castellanos. Deyna played last year for Bay FC in their inaugural season, but didn’t quite find a spot on the team. She never was really comfortable, and toward the end of the season, she was on the bench. So it is hoped that Deyna kind of finds a home here in Portland.

Also today, they signed a player from Wake Forest named Caiya Hanks, who was a 2024 finalist for the MAC Hermann Trophy, which goes to the best college soccer player every season. She was on the Wake Forest team that won the NCAA championship for women’s soccer. She had 11 goals and 12 assists last season, so she’s gonna be key to the attack also as we head into the season.

Miller: You didn’t mention, because there’s so much there, that Christine Sinclair retired last year as well. So between the injuries, Sophia Wilson’s pregnancy and some of the new folks, what you’re describing seems like such a new team. How are they going to find stability after all of this turnover? And this is on top of some managerial turnover as well in recent years. How are they going to find stability?

Peterson: So they didn’t just lose Christine Sinclair, they lost one of my favorite players of all time, Becky Sauerbrunn, who was a national team veteran, a two-time World Cup winner. She decided to retire at the beginning of this season, and she’s now doing broadcast work for the NWSL. So those were two huge losses for leadership in the locker room. We’ll have to see who steps up to replace them.

The team just recently named Sam Coffey, who won a gold medal with the national team last year in Paris – she’s a midfielder, probably one of the best midfielders, I think, in the NWSL by far – she was named a co-captain of the team. So it might be that Sam steps into that role and becomes the leader that the team needs to kind of be the glue. Christine Sinclair, despite being very soft spoken, was definitely the glue that held that team together. So we’ll have to see as we go forward what happens with the Thorns, in terms of leadership.

Miller: Anne, thanks very much.

Peterson: Thank you.

Miller: Anne Peterson is a Portland-based sports writer for the Association Press. She joined us to talk about professional soccer back in Portland, back in the U.S.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.